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I pass this sign very frequently. It sits on Moreland near a coffee shop I’ve recently started to like to go to. It makes me think about how, indeed, not so long ago, this area was a forest. And how now East Atlanta is a concrete, asphalt, brick, paint, and power line forest.

Our outside appearances may change. Our technology may change. But really, it is the same as it has ever been. I recently read a biography of Jesus — Zealot by Reza Aslan, whose name reminds me of the lion in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, — and what Jesus was fighting against then we are still trying to change now. The gross inequity between the haves and have-nots. Over-taxation. Religious beliefs. Societal norms. War. Murder. Poverty. And it’s not like Jesus was the first man. This was happening thousands of years before him, as it has continued on for two thousand more. Even as a student of history, it’s hard to think that that many years have passed and yet we are the same breed of person, with the same collective thoughts.

I don’t know why this sign is there. It looks like it’s on private property. Does the person want this land to go back to being a forest? It makes me nostalgic for a all those years I never got to experience. We wanted to progress, and here we are, so far and yet not very far from where we started. And most likely it will, someday, be forest again. When society as we know it is long gone and this sign remains longer than all the other rubble. And when someone in the far distant future finds it, what will they think?